A New Purpose
by Person4
Summary: Luzzu had thought that he'd found his place in the world again after returning to Besaid.


Luzzu had thought that he'd found his place in the world again after returning to Besaid, but that quickly changed with the return of Yuna and her guardians. It was only to be expected that nobody wanted to train with him if they thought that they had any chance of begging lessons out of one of the heroes who had saved Spira, but it did leave him feeling useless. Worse, the only one who kept regularly attending his training sessions was an eager young man who reminded him so much of Gatta that the grief of it made his stomach churn and bile rise up in his throat every time he found himself alone with the boy.

He left Besaid again not long afterwards, slipping out on the first boat that left one morning. Yuna, Wakka, and Lulu were the only ones to see him off, and even that was a surprise since he'd thought he'd thought he kept his plans a secret. Then again, it was _Yuna_; one look at his face had probably let her know what he was going to do before he'd ever even known it himself.

His first thought had been to return to the The Crusaders' beginnings, patrolling the Mi'ihen highroad to protect any travelers making their way along it. That plan had lasted until he reached the spot where he and Gatta had stopped to congratulate Wakka on his victory at the Blitzball tournament. He still remembered how excited Gatta had been, how he'd taken the win as a sign from Yevon that their mission would be a success. What were the chances that Besaid would even win so much as a game otherwise?

Luzzu knew that he wouldn't be able to stand passing by that spot everyday any more than he'd been able to stand looking his one final student back in Besaid in the face.

He passed through the Mushroom Rock and Djose roads as quickly as possible. It was a sign of how far he'd fallen that he was somewhat proud of himself that he'd only needed to stop to force down vomit once, when he'd spotted the rusting helmet of one of his comrades half-hidden behind a boulder and suddenly felt as if he could hear the cries of the dead in his ears all over again.

At the Moonflow he was struck with the brief and rather ridiculous urge to become a Shoopuf driver, the only driver capable of fighting off any fiends who happened to attack his passengers, but he was able to recognize that as the desire to just be settled somewhere, _anywhere_, that it was and not a true reflection of what he wanted. And it was there that he found a destination to point himself towards again, in rumors that the Crusader's training center in the Calm Lands had been restored.

It would be the perfect ending to his journey. The old training grounds had been the first place he'd found purpose in his life, as an idealistic young kid who'd dreamed of saving the world even if he didn't have the ability to be a Summoner or enough talent to be a guardian. It would be right for him to find his new purpose there as well.

It was a thought that carried him the rest of the way across the continent, until he reached the doors of the arena and found it abandoned but for a hand-full of fiends who had apparently found that their stalls made comfortable homes even if they were free to leave them.

The Al Bhed woman who managed the Travel Agency on the other side of the plain freely gave him all the information he needed when asked. "Poor old Rello," she said as she fixed Luzzu a meal. "He was a good old fellow for a Yevonite... no offense meant of course. Once a week every week since I was a little girl helping my mama here I can remember him coming to buy extra food off us so there'd be decent food in that hole. It was always sad to see him need less and less as knew boys stopped coming, even though I can't say I was sorry to have less religion-crazy young... ah, you don't want to hear about that. At any rate, he didn't show up his very first supply day after Sin was destroyed, and when I sent one of the boys over to check up on him they found him dead in his cot, and fiends that had escaped that arena of his swarming the area. We think he was only holding on all this time to make sure there was a place to train up new Crusaders to fight off Sinspawn, and once Sin was gone he just let go." She placed a plate full of the food she'd been working on in front of Luzzu, a pile of meat and vegetables so well-spiced that his eyes started to water just from the smell of it, then stared out across the Calm Lands. "I'll tell you, we're lucky that there were still plenty of Summoners and Guardians moping around being disappointed that their grand heroic sacrifices were stolen right in the last leg of their pilgrimages, or we would have been in trouble from some of the creatures he had in there. Even with most of the fiends destroyed now we need to keep a few groups on payroll, because every time we think the last of them has been sent on its way some new specially-created horror comes swooping down on us and needs to be taken down."

Luzzu thanked her for the information then found a quiet corner to slump in as he mulled over the new information. He supposed he could ask if the agency could hire one more fighter, but it sounded like he'd come to late to really be useful. Besides that, Crusaders did not charge for their services, but it wouldn't be right for him to start running around killing the fiends on his own and risk depriving some other poor fighter of his job when the manager realized someone else was doing it for free. But apart from that he no longer had any idea what he might do, save perhaps walking the rest of the way across the Calm Lands to see if Kimahri needed any help pulling his people together.

"My, my, my," a sultry female voice interrupted his thoughts. "I recognize that face."

He glanced up just long enough to be sure that he had no idea who the woman was; someone who looked at least half-Al Bhed judging by her hair color, but with Yevonite eyes and wearing an outfit that he suspected no sane person of either race would be caught dead in. "I'm afraid that I don't know you," he told her, and tried to turn his attention back to his meal.

"Oh, I don't know you, Love, but I do _know_ you." She snapped the fan she was holding shut and tucked the end of it under his chin, forcing his head back up so she could carefully study his face. He didn't notice that it was a weapon until he felt its bladed edges pressing lightly against his skin. "You feel lost, don't you, Love? Here were are in the Calm we've always be waited for, and all of a sudden you realize that you've built your whole little life around Sin and now that it's gone you have nothing left."

"It's rather pathetic," another, cultured, voice said, and Luzzu's eyes darted sideways to spot two men standing together watching him and the woman, one of them short and fat, the other rail-thin.

"But we were kind of the same way," the short man admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

"Not for long," the woman said, drawing Luzzu's attention back to her. "Soon Spira will see that you can't keep LeBlanc down for long! No, not just me, but everyone who's found themselves lost in this new world!" She moved the fan at last, but replaced it with her hand, her fingers surprisingly gentle against his face. "Tell me, Love, would you like a new purpose?"

Luzzu was old enough and wise enough to know better than to just leap on an offer like that without more information, but there was still a part of him deep within that lunged forward at just the _word_ 'purpose'. And it wasn't as though just learning more could hurt. "What do you have in mind?" he asked.

And she smiled like she already had him in the palm of her hand. 


End file.
